3.1. Tocharian

Tocharian archaisms are not comparable to Anatolian, and it certainly split from a parent language that showed common features with Late PIE dialects: common laryngeal evolution (see §II.2. Laryngeal evolution), development of the feminine, expansion of thematic stems, loss of productivity of the collective plural, shared LPIE developments of the case system (obscured by the innovative syncretism of Common Tocharian), of the verbal system (such as durational vs. non-durational, passive constructions, modal developments, etc.).

Tocharian has been traditionally described as closer to Italic and Celtic due to certain common morphological developments, but it has also been described as closer to Latin, to Germanic, or to Balto-Slavic. It was most likely part of an ancient Northern Indo-European dialectal region in common with North-West Indo-European dialects (see above).

Tocharian phonological and morphological archaisms may include the following:

· Tocharian inherited a full-fledged three-way gender contrast from LPIE, although there are some doubts regarding the supposed productivity of the athematic *-iħ forms, coupled with the apparent scarcity of thematic *-eħ forms (Fellner 2014), suggesting that the language split preceded the creation of the feminine paradigm of thematic adjectives (Kortlandt 2017).

· LPIE subjunctive and Tocharian subjunctive show fully different categories, with LPIE showing the thematic suffix *-e/-o, and Tocharian not having a subjunctive suffix. This root formation may have been the initial subjunctive stage in LPIE (Peyrot 2013).

· LPIE system of stops underwent major reductions in Proto-Tocharian, with the collapse of the three PIE manners of articulation (unvoiced, voiced, and voiced aspirated) into deaspirated voiceless articulation.

The first documents of written Tocharian date to the early medieval period, along the northern Silk Road, within the Tarim basin. Tocharian A manuscripts come from the eastern area (Shorchuk and Turfan), and Tocharian B texts found throughout the whole area, although texts from the western part appear to be more archaic than the central dialect (Penney 2017).

The earliest dated texts come from AD mid–7th c., with the Tocharian script likely being developed at the end of the 4th or beginning of the 5th century, with radiocarbon dates available ranging ca. 400–900 (and up to 1200) for Tocharian B, and ca. 700–1000 for Tocharian A documents. The existence of two (maybe three) distinct dialects place a Common Tocharian language some time ca. 500 BC – 1 AD, whereas the split of Pre-Tocharian from the parent Late Proto-Indo-European is assumed to be older than any other dialect.

In spite of the lack of lexical borrowings, phonetic Uralisms are described based on Tocharian coalescence of the three manners of articulation, similar to the adoption of loanwords in Uralic dialects (i.e. PIE *T, *ˀD, *D→ *T) and on the later palatalisation trend. This would have been quite likely due to contacts with a branch related to Ugric or Samoyedic (Kallio 2001).

3.1.4.1. Tocharian–Indo-Iranian contacts

Common developments with Indo-Iranian and Indo-Aryan include (Carling 2004):

· Innovative transition from inflection to agglutination and group inflection attributed to a non-Indo-European influence. This includes:

o The collapse of the eight-case system, most likely at an early date and partly due to the loss of final syllables, although this must have taken place over a long period (and be still active e.g. by the time ‘Buddha was adopted as CmToch. *put > *pät, and other Indo-Aryan borrowings in both Toch. A and Toch. B). This process paralleled that of Indo-Aryan evolution from Old Indo-Aryan (Vedic and Sanskrit) to the break down in Middle Indo-Aryan as a result of internal pressures and phonological erosion extending over a period of more than a thousand years, but the circumstances and periods are different, so at best one could propose a similar ‘areal contact’ influencing both branches.

o Restructuralisation of the verbal system, determined by factors such as valence and aktionsart, an innovation proper to Tocharian.

· PT *kercäpā- (<*ghordhobho-) is equivalent to Skt. gardabhá- (<*ghordhebho-), both meaning ‘donkey, ass’, with common PIE suffix for animals *-bho (cf. Gk. elaphós ‘red-deer’, Skt. vr̥ṣabhá- ‘bull’). It has been suggested that it was an early borrowing, before the merger of non-high vowels in Indo-Iranian, or else we would expect *kertepo (Adams 2013). The change of stem may suggest a rather early loanword, possibly during the migration of Pre-Tocharian to the east through Pre-Proto-Indo-Iranian territory.

· PT *u̯i̯aime→ Toch. B. ime (Toch. A ime is a loanword from Toch. B) ‘consciousness, awareness; thought; memory, recollection’ has been proposed to be a loanword from the same source as Skt. *vidmán- ‘knowledge’, from LPIE *u̯i̯eidmen- (Adams 2013) which would put the borrowing around the Proto-Indo-Iranian period.

Other, later Indo-Aryan and Iranian contacts are reviewed in detail in Carling (2004).

3.1.4.2. Tocharian–Chinese contacts

Old Chinese and Tocharian contacts are also described in detail by Lubotsky and Starostin (2003), and are interesting in so far as they suggest the early presence of Proto-Tocharian in Chinese Turkestan at least by the mid–2nd millennium BC:

Further borrowings, clearly after the Old Chinese period and during the Early Middle Chinese (transition period ca. 200 BC – AD 400) are relatively abundant and cover semantic fields of economy, techniques, and institutions, and are shared with neighbouring Sogdian and Khotanese languages.

3.1.4.3. Tocharian–Turkic contacts

Turkic borrowings are probably late, although some early contacts have been proposed:

A common PT nom. pl. cannot be reconstructed: Toch. B points to a remade plural in *-i (as in Italic and Greek), while Toch. A points to a remade plural in *-nes. Here, the common PIE pl. *-es (thematic *-ōs) is used.